(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
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John Elliott Ward was born at Sunbury, Liberty County, Ga. His father, William Ward, was a member of the Midway colony of Puritans from Massachusetts which settled in Liberty County before the Revolutionary War. Through his mother, Anne (McIntosh) Ward, he was a descendant of John McIntosh Mohr, who led a clan of Scottish Highlanders to Georgia in General Oglethorpe's time.
Ward entered Amherst College in 1831, but left because of a prejudice against Georgians existing at that time. He attended law lectures at Harvard, studied under Dr. Matthew Hall McAllister in Savannah.
He was admitted to the bar by special act of legislature in 1835 before he was twenty-one. Early in the following year he was appointed solicitor-general for the eastern district of Georgia, and served until 1838 when he became United States district attorney for Georgia. He resigned in 1839 to enter the Georgia legislature, to which he was again elected in 1845 and 1853, serving as speaker in 1853-54. In 1857 he was made president of the state Senate and acting lieutenant-governor. He is credited with being more responsible than any other person for the final breaking down of the traditional prejudices between up-country Georgians and Savannah representatives in the legislature, even though he led the opposition against the popular bank-control measures of Gov. Joseph E. Brown. Meanwhile, in 1852, reluctant to leave an extensive law practice in Savannah, he had declined the offer of appointment to the United States Senate tendered him by Gov. Howell Cobb. In 1854 he was elected mayor of Savannah, and during his term was so successful in dealing with the great yellow-fever epidemic on the one hand, and in carrying out thorough political and police reforms on the other, that he was offered the renomination without opposition; this, however, he declined. At Cincinnati in 1856 he was president of the National Democratic Convention which nominated Buchanan. In December 1858 President Buchanan appointed him envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to China, his particular mission being to exchange ratifications of the new American treaty with China and to settle outstanding American claims. Because of his determined refusal to kotow he was unable to effect a direct exchange of ratifications with the emperor. "I kneel only to God and woman, " he declared. He accomplished his mission, however, in a manner entirely satisfactory to President Buchanan. He also won the hearty appreciation of his European colleagues in China by his intelligent and friendly cooperation, but he was not blind to certain high-handed tactics on the part of some of them, and he denounced the infamous coolie trade which was carried on for foreign firms by American ships. He left China on December 15, 1860, arriving home in the opening days of the Civil War. Bitterly disappointed at the secession of Georgia, he took no part in the hostilities, and in January 1866 removed to New York City, where he engaged in the private practice of law. In 1902, a few weeks before his death, he returned to Liberty County, where he died at Dorchester in his eighty-ninth year.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
He married in 1839 Olivia Buckminster Sullivan, daughter of William Sullivan of Boston; eight children were born to them.
